The director behind the "画江湖" (Hua Jiang Hu) animated series was once asked at a forum how Chinese animation was doing overseas. His answer: “Not great. The box office of those recent hit domestic animated features barely registers in North America, and the audience is mostly Chinese diaspora.” When the same panel was asked who translated those films, or who would be doing the translation, none of the directors or producers present could say. And that sums it up — people are quick to ask who did the VFX or the post-production, but who translated the film rarely gets a second thought.
As domestic films gain momentum, what exactly goes into taking them overseas? Where does translation of scripts, dialogue and other text fit into the picture?
Who Does the Translation?
Trying to find out who translated any given film is not easy. Unless you sit through every last frame of the end credits, you’ll likely miss the translator’s name — and even if you do, the names scroll by so fast and there are so many that you still might not catch it. Last year I watched three films I’d helped translate in the theater, and only in Sheep Without a Shepherd (误杀) did I spot my name, because the producer had put our studio’s logo in the credits.
Translation quality is critical to how a film performs abroad, yet translation remains arguably the most undervalued link in the whole filmmaking chain.
Since 2010 I’ve handled translation for several dozen film and TV projects. Out of every ten clients who come to us, eight balk at the quote — even though our rate is the industry standard for film translation. Most still think it’s too expensive. A complete feature script usually runs 30,000 to 50,000 Chinese characters, and the dialogue list another 9,000 to 15,000. Even if we used only native English speakers, the combined translation fee for script and dialogue list would be around RMB 50,000 to 70,000 — maybe less than a single day’s catering for the crew. And still, the vast majority of clients say it’s too much.
The same goes for TV series translation. A colleague in the translation industry once asked if we'd take on a script translation job for a TV series. Each episode had roughly 8,000 characters of dialogue, but the client's budget was only 1,000 RMB, with a one-day turnaround.
What does translating 8,000 Chinese characters into English in one day actually mean? For quality-focused translation, a Chinese-to-English translator typically handles only 2,000–3,000 Chinese characters per day. Even our native bilingual translators in both Chinese and English cap out at 5,000 characters daily. From a freelancer's perspective, earning 1,000 RMB a day is decent—many would take it. But for the client, hiring someone at less than 150 RMB per thousand characters and expecting 8,000 characters a day? How good could that quality really be?
China's translation rates are notoriously among the lowest in the world. The chaotic and cutthroat pricing across the entire Chinese translation market has led people to believe that film translation should be cheap too—filmmaking itself is already a money pit. How much does it cost to hire an actor? What about a VFX team? And marketing and distribution? Compared to all those costs, the translation team gets the smallest share by far.
A Chinese film aiming at the overseas market has to sell itself three times: first to distributors, then to juries, and finally to audiences. That means the film's international push requires three sets of translations: a synopsis package (including plot summary and character bios), the full script, and the dialogue list. A poorly translated script will kill interest from overseas distributors or investors; bad dialogue translation seriously hurts awards consideration; and shoddy subtitles ruin the viewing experience, undermining word-of-mouth abroad. Investing in the right translator for your film is absolutely worth it.
"Faithfulness, Expressiveness, Elegance" or Just Wishful Thinking?
How do you pick the right translator for a film? And who decides if a translation is any good? A producer’s first instinct might be: “Get someone with solid English to vet the work, and make sure it follows the three principles — faithfulness, expressiveness, elegance.”
A few years ago I wrote an article titled “Your ‘Faithfulness, Expressiveness, Elegance’ Is Giving Me a Headache,” which racked up nearly a million views online. Some praised it to the skies; others tracked me down from Zhihu to Weibo just to vent. My view hasn’t changed: these three words have become the go-to “theoretical foundation” — or perhaps, the theoretical tumor — that lets amateurs boss around professionals. Many people are so deeply influenced by this triad that they insist Chinese-to-English translation must also embody “faithfulness, expressiveness, elegance.” Even if the source script has zero literary merit, they still expect the English output to sound “elevated,” “gracefully written,” or they try to render semi-classical Chinese into so-called “archaic English” (a concept that doesn’t actually exist in the Anglophone world). But the truth is, we Chinese are not native English speakers. What many consider “elegant” often turns out to be grammatically flawed, syntactically awkward, and sometimes even stuck in the wrong tense (English scripts and synopses are normally narrated in the simple present tense).
We have to admit it: English is not our mother tongue, and without enough accumulated experience, our “feel” for the language is often off. That’s why production teams run into the same problem: they tend to ask “a Chinese colleague with good English” or “an overseas Chinese” to evaluate test translations — yet these people may not even have the chops to judge a Chinese-to-English translation properly. Naturally, they end up picking the wrong translator.
Rather than letting a self-proclaimed English-proficient Chinese speaker make the final call, it's better to have a native English speaker read through the translation for grammar errors and comprehensibility—after all, the final output is meant for foreign audiences, not a domestic audience with varying levels of English ability.
What many fail to realize is that translation is a specialized skill requiring professional training. Being confident in one's English, having studied abroad, or having worked overseas does not qualify someone to translate anything, let alone evaluate the quality of translations. Good translation demands linguistic aptitude, systematic study, and most importantly, practical experience. Even among those with a bachelor's degree in English and a master's in translation, a significant portion still cannot handle professional translation work—let alone non-language majors with just a few years of overseas experience. If a client hasn't hired a half-baked translator in the first place, they shouldn't be asking just anyone to review the translation quality.
Script Translation: Time or Quality?
Film crews are often in a rush with translation, so script translation frequently requires teamwork. When our studio translated the first act of The Wandering Earth in the summer of 2016, I led two lead translators to complete over 20,000 Chinese characters in seven days. Before that, we studied plenty of English scripts and briefed the collaborating translators on the script format, tense usage, style, and other basics.
The producer of The Wandering Earth hired multiple translation teams and provided us with a detailed glossary upfront, including character names, place names, and proper nouns (e.g., "firestone," "planetary engine"). During the initial stage of the Crazy Alien translation, we were the only external translation team. We kept pushing for more time to ensure quality, but the production schedule was extremely tight, expecting us to finish the entire script within a week—or update the revised script in just two to three days.
The Wild Alien had more versions than any other script I've handled. While we were working on the Chinese-English translation, the Chinese and American writers were still making revisions on their end. All told, the translation took three to four months. I have nearly a hundred related files saved on my computer — Chinese and English versions for each draft, translator deliverables, edits, feedback, and final approvals. The upside of team collaboration is speed; the downside is the difficulty of maintaining consistent style and quality across contributors, not to mention the time spent on final proofreading and alignment.
The ideal approach for film translation is to have one translator handle the entire script from start to finish. This is the best way to ensure consistency in terminology and style. For Chinese-to-English projects, it's strongly recommended to have a native English speaker involved in translation or editing. Most scripts aren't particularly difficult linguistically — they're not highly literary. Compared to novels, the descriptions are simpler, and the real challenge lies in dialogues and action lines. But the simpler and more everyday the language, the more it tests a translator's skill. There are no boilerplate expressions from press releases, academic papers, or speeches to fall back on, making it impossible to gloss over unidiomatic English.
Handling cultural differences is probably the toughest part of film translation. In this regard, the localization of Monkey King: Hero Is Back had some clever touches worth highlighting. Take the rapid-fire Q&A between Liuer (the child) and the Monkey King. Many of Liuer's questions are rooted in Chinese culture. For instance, he asks, "Does the Heavenly King with a Pagoda actually have a pagoda?" The Monkey King says no. The scene is meant to capture a child's playful humor. If you translate that line word for word, foreign audiences unfamiliar with the "Heavenly King with a Pagoda" will find it completely jarring.
So the translator rephrased the question: "How did you get your special powers?" The Monkey King replied, "I ate a lot of special bananas." This approach bridges the cultural gap and makes the joke work—a valid strategy.
Writing a script is a creative act; translating one is no less an art. It takes time and patience to refine the work, allowing careful consideration of how best to convey the message to audiences from different cultural backgrounds.
Why Do Movie Subtitles Often Have Errors?
Based on years of observation, most Chinese films' English subtitles have at least a few issues.
For instance, in "Monkey King: Hero is Back," the translator misspelled "Sifu" (which had been used consistently throughout) as "Sigh." In a fast-moving scene, this can throw the audience for a moment.
The problems in Chinese-to-English subtitles aren't always as glaring as the classic English-to-Chinese blunder where "He's back" became "His Back" (他的背). It's more like speaking with a foreigner who's studied Chinese for a few years—you can communicate with gestures and guesswork, but something always feels off.
Beyond the lack of native-speaker involvement resulting in unnatural translations, another reason for subtitle errors is that production teams often don't let translators watch the film. The translation of the dialogue script is frequently used directly for the English subtitles, but for confidentiality reasons, the team rarely provides access to the actual footage. Without the visuals, the translator's work is inevitably compromised.
This comes down to the production’s security protocols. Translators — especially foreign ones and revisers — are often based in different cities, and the production team worries that file transfers could lead to leaks. So translators only work from scripts. But a script can’t answer every question, and if the translator can’t get timely clarification from the production, a lazy or incurious lead translator might introduce errors from misreading the material.
Once Chinese and English subtitles are in, the film typically goes through multiple rounds of editing and revision, which can shuffle the order of the already-placed translation. If the production makes changes without looping in the translator, it can result in mistranslations or subtitles that don't match the picture. But compared to visible continuity errors, most domestic productions and audiences simply don’t care much about the quality of English subtitles. If the film doesn’t break out overseas, foreign audience complaints about the translation rarely reach the people who need to hear them. The fact that Chinese films struggle abroad isn’t just about cultural differences — poor translation widens the gap. When foreign viewers already face cultural barriers, a bad subtitle just makes things worse.
Translation for film and TV is not something to take lightly. It’s a key channel for reaching overseas audiences, and if it’s handled carelessly, the whole effort suffers. It deserves its own budget, just like VFX, editing, and sound.